


Wings of Bone

by taichara



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 02:38:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12071913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: Losing a prize student in a totally expected way leaves Roy mulling over his life, his choices, and just how and why he got himself posted at a Garrison in the middle of nowhere.





	Wings of Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalloway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalloway/gifts).



> Add one Instructor and a heaping helping of "why are these things even things" to an empty world, and what do you get? A grumpy Instructor Fokker. Hope it feels in some holes, one way or another X3

_Well here we go. This is just a fucking amazing way to start my morning._

Not five minutes into his office, and the thought processes of one Roy Fokker -- _'oh, sorry, Instructor Fokker, keep on reminding yourself you need to set an example, Roy'_ \-- were as black and as bitter as the coffee he was busily slamming back. They were so black, in fact, that Roy heartily wished for something a hell of a lot stronger in his coffee mug, thank you very much --

Alas, no amount of wishing was going to produced the desired results, whether to magically bring him booze _or_ to change the spilled sheaf of documents (actual, dead-tree documents, topped off by an actual letter on actual official Garrison letterhead, because of _course_ it was) that lay in wait on his desk like a surly alligator just daring him to come closer. 

_Okay. Time to face someone else's music. Fun, fun._

Roy dropped into his chair with a smothered curse; already aggravated, he didn't sit down carefully enough and was promptly rewarded with a ripple of throbbing points of pain that pinballed up and across his back, pointed reminder of why he was at the Garrison teaching sometimes-idiot children in the first place.

Well, one of the reasons.

Expletives gradually mutated into a sigh of resignated as the flareup subsided; draining the last of the coffee, Roy set his mug down (out of range of flying documents) and picked up the offending sheaf of papers. And then cursed once more with feeling, just on principle.

_You just couldn't get it together, could you, kid._

_I tried. Hell, you tried -- sort of, and mostly when you thought I wouldn't notice. But skill and spitfire isn't enough in this kind of place, and since I couldn't knock discipline into you with the proverbal metaphorical sledgehammer --_

\-- Since he couldn't get that discipline hammered home one way or another, Roy found himself facing dead tree informing him of a forcible removal from the Garrison rolls and the sudden, annoying necessity to work around a surprise gap in his student team-assignments. 

Worse, he'd just lost his promising potential dogfighter. Now what? There wasn't a single cadet in the current pool likely to make a suitable replacement; oh, he'd probably wind up administering a new round of competency tests -- that's what half the pile of dead tree was actually _for_ \-- but Roy already knew damn well he'd probably come up empty. 

_I might -- might! -- scare up a body with potential. Maybe. If I'm lucky. I'd like to know how I'd have missed them the first few go-rounds, mind you._

He'd find cadets who could learn to _fly_ \-- they were already working on _that_ \-- but this was the first time in too damn long he'd gotten a student who had the drive to _fight_.

And now the little monster finally got himself drummed out of the Garrison.

Fucking lovely.

_Damn it! I just needed more time ..._

Time to what? a mocking little voice needled him over, somewhere in the back of his mind. Time to _set him straight_? Good luck with that. Time to make some kind of point to the Garrison brass? What kind of point was there to make that hadn't been made, unsuccessfully, a thousand times over --

_Smarten the hell up, Fokker. You're getting as bad as the cadets._

Roy chuckled at his self-browbeating, saluted the empty air with his empty mug. Yeah, he really was being like the most ornery of his students, wasn't he.

_Except I can't get myself drummed out of here like the little hotshot. There's too much riding on my actually pulling this off._

Or, at least, so he firmly believed. The throbbing in his back whenever he leaned back at just the wrong angle was a vivid reminder of exactly _why_ he believed it -- and he'd burned a hell of a lot of goodwill with the Defense Force (while it still _was_ the Defense Force) to get himself transferred to an Earth-side assignment and not one of the Lunar or Martian institutions. Even _if_ tweaking Edwards' nose by following him off-planet would've probably made up for any long stretches of potential boredom out in space. 

No, it was still better long-term planning to let his one-time bitter rival get the glory while Roy so-kindly gave in after years of wrangling, and hung up his wings to teach fool kiddos how to keep themselves alive in the air and beyond. How to keep _others_ alive.

How to kill, in order to achieve either of those goals.

Staring at the forms and the notice of dismissal, he could feel the old headache rearing up again. Oh no, they all said; no, there was no need to worry about warfare on that scale, or any scale, again; Earth and its satellites have learned better, they all said.

_Sorry, folks, but I don't believe the world's that simple and that's why I'm still alive._

The new -- still new, to his mind -- United Earth Alliance pushed its message of the end of all war so loudly and so smotheringly that Roy could almost convince himself those heads of state believed their own propaganda.

_But as much as I'd like it, this quiet's not going to last forever._

... Ten years. Ten years and counting since the planet damn near tore itself apart; hell, the last few fresh batches of bright-eyed cadets couldn't even _remember_ the Global Civil War except as -- maybe -- vague impressions of unhappiness. And the UEA wanted it that way, sugarcoating the horrors that slagged whole stretches of the planet. His cadets -- his students -- had no real idea how much their dreams of achieving space and beyond had been paid for in blood and tears and loss.

Worse, they seemed, nearly to a body, to treat their training as a lark, some kind of game where fuckups didn't matter except as a docking of grades. And that kind of cavalier attitude cost _lives_ in the void, where any mistake could be fatal -- or could spark an insult fit to set off another war.

_... And I'd bet on insults setting off fireworks happening any day now, because there's tensions ramping up already, when you know where to look for it._

Grinding his teeth, Roy stared off into the middle distance. 

_Too many people aren't getting enough slices of that pie in the sky, for starters; or they think they aren't, and that's even worse. Too many more people want to throw their weight around._

_And here I am, short the only likely fighter I've turned up in years. Great._

With a grunt of annoyance, he refocused. A sudden, quick series of keystrokes, almost instinct at this point, and Roy's monitor flickering to life with lists: lists of names, of test- and simulator-scores, of piloting aptitudes -- exploratory, commercial-cargo, fighter, all-purpose -- and of personal notations. For a long, frustrating minute Roy stared at the mutely-glowing lists, grumbling; then he heaved himself from his seat and snatched his mug up as he went. This was going to take a hell of a lot more caffiene than he had in his system. And he still heartily wished it was whiskey instead.

_Come on, Fokker, there has to be someone. Find your diamonds in the rough --_

That _was_ the deal, after all. Commander Fokker, decorated and damaged, got himself mustered out to teach cadets not to blow themselves up or fall out of the sky for the rest of his days and, in return, he and his 'assistants' were given resources to train selected cadets in a fighter pilot's program of his devising. 

It was for defense, he'd argued; even given to more overt warfare (not that Roy expected that to last forever), there would always be terrorists, troublemakers, threats. In space, where the threats included hostile hijackers -- sure, why not, let's say 'pirates' -- looking to hold a fragile station hostage, or to claim a valuable cargo for themselves, the ability to fight back quickly and conclusively was paramount; amateurs would put too many lives at stake. The UEA could not _afford_ to completely phase out the Defense Force's legacy.

So the Powers That Be had agreed, in the end -- and then left him teaching children who thought they were playing games, without even a single hangar of actual craft.

Sometimes he wondered if Garrison Command just didn't feel safe unless the infamous 'Black Skull' Fokker stayed harmlessly groundbound, old injuries or no.

_It'd explain a lot, at least._

Scrolling, scrolling ... And now he'd drained the mug dry again, slowly this time, and still came up with no nibbles.

Well, fuck.

_Guess I'm interrupting classes for another round of placement tests after all._

_I'll break it to the hordes after first assembly along with the news of 'misconduct' -- see if a one-two punch doesn't wake a few bodies up for me._

_If nothing else, it might be good for a few laughs in private; lord knows I could use them._

A sharp, wolfish smile settled into place despite himself at the prospect, oh yes. There was no better way to get a good measure of one's students than to shake up their nice, comfortable routines, after all --

And Instructor Fokker found himself restructuring the entire weeks' schedule with a surprisingly lightened mood.

It was like strafing the enemy, in its own way.

And he'd always been good at hit and run.


End file.
